Enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects

ABSTRACT

Enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects is described. A database system outputs a data object to a user device in response to receiving a user selection of the data object. The database system outputs a data service object, associated with a third-party data service, to the user device in response to receiving a user selection of the third-party data service. The database system stores metadata that maps between a data field, associated with the data object, and a data service field, associated with the data service object, in response to receiving a user selection of the data field and the data service field. The database system updates an instance of the data object by using the metadata to send request data to the third-party data service and using the metadata to receive response data from the third-party service.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

BACKGROUND

The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.

A database can store digital objects that represent each person and/or organization that may be able to help in achieving a goal. Each object may consist of a few standard fields, such as first name, last name, job title, industry, company name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, fax number, mobile phone number, number of employees, and company revenue. There is significant value in enriching such a database with data available from a third-party data service.

However, data for the same entity may be represented very differently by different data sources. For example, some data sources may have data that needs to be merged when communicating data with other data sources, such as a pair of data fields named “street1” and “street2” that need to be merged into a single data field street. In another example, some data sources may have data that needs to be split when communicating data with other data sources, such as when a data field “name” contains the full name of a person, and needs to be split into the pair of data fields for first name and last name. In yet another example, some data sources may have data that needs to be matched when communicating data with other data sources, such as when one data source has a data field for zip code while another data source has a data field for postal code. Other examples of potential data conflicts are between a toll free business phone number and a regular business phone number, between a business email address and a personal email address, and between a business mailing address and a personal mailing address. Therefore, before importing data from a third-party data service into a database, some data may need to be mapped. While a database provider may create maps to communicate data between the database provider's standard data objects and a third-party data service, database users may create custom objects to store non-standard information. Consequently, a database user may have to create their own code that maps between the data fields of a custom object and the data fields used by a third-party data service.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the following drawings like reference numbers are used to refer to like elements. Although the following figures depict various examples, the one or more implementations are not limited to the examples depicted in the figures.

FIG. 1 is an operational flow diagram illustrating a high level overview of a method for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects, in an embodiment;

FIG. 2 illustrates example objects for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects, in an embodiment;

FIG. 3 illustrates a block diagram of an example of an environment wherein an on-demand database service might be used; and

FIG. 4 illustrates a block diagram of an embodiment of elements of FIG. 3 and various possible interconnections between these elements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

General Overview

In accordance with embodiments described herein, there are provided systems and methods for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects. A system outputs a data object to a user device in response to receiving a user selection of the data object. The system outputs a data service object associated with a third-party data service to the user device in response to receiving a user selection of the third-party data service. The system stores metadata that maps between a data field, associated with the data object, and a data service field, associated with the data service object, in response to receiving a user selection of the data field and the data service field. The system updates an instance of the data object by using the metadata to send request data to the third-party data service and using the metadata to receive response data from the third-party service.

For example, a user selects a contact object that stores data for business contacts because the user wants the contact data updated, and a database system outputs the contact object to the user's display screen. The user selects Data.com®, a web-data extraction service or web scraping service, and the database system outputs a data service object for Data.com®. The user selects the company field of the contact object and the employer field of the Data.com® data service object, and the database system stores metadata that maps between the company field and the employer field. The user requests Data.com® to update the contact data, and the database system updates the contact data for Joe Smith of Salesforce.com by using the metadata to send data identifying Joe Smith to Datacom® and to receive data, including Joe's new phone number, from Data.com®. The database user quickly and easily creates metadata that maps between the fields of a custom object and the data fields used by a third-party data service, without the need to create code that remains hard-coded and inflexible when the database user attempts to apply the laboriously created code to a different data object—data service combination.

Systems and methods are provided for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects. As used herein, the term multi-tenant database system refers to those systems in which various elements of hardware and software of the database system may be shared by one or more customers. For example, a given application server may simultaneously process requests for a great number of customers, and a given database table may store rows for a potentially much greater number of customers. As used herein, the term query plan refers to a set of steps used to access information in a database system. Next, methods and mechanisms for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects will be described with reference to example embodiments. The following detailed description will first describe a method for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects. Next, example objects for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects are described.

While one or more implementations and techniques are described with reference to an embodiment in which enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects is implemented in a system having an application server providing a front end for an on-demand database service capable of supporting multiple tenants, the one or more implementations and techniques are not limited to multi-tenant databases nor deployment on application servers. Embodiments may be practiced using other database architectures, i.e., ORACLE®, DB2® by IBM and the like without departing from the scope of the embodiments claimed.

Any of the embodiments described herein may be used alone or together with one another in any combination. The one or more implementations encompassed within this specification may also include embodiments that are only partially mentioned or alluded to or are not mentioned or alluded to at all in this brief summary or in the abstract. Although various embodiments may have been motivated by various deficiencies with the prior art, which may be discussed or alluded to in one or more places in the specification, the embodiments do not necessarily address any of these deficiencies. In other words, different embodiments may address different deficiencies that may be discussed in the specification. Some embodiments may only partially address some deficiencies or just one deficiency that may be discussed in the specification, and some embodiments may not address any of these deficiencies.

FIG. 1 is an operational flow diagram illustrating a high level overview of a method 100 for enabling a third-party data service to update custom objects. The examples of objects which are described below in reference to FIG. 1 are depicted in FIG. 2 and described below in reference to FIG. 2.

First, a system receives a user selection of a data object, block 102. For example and without limitation, this can include a user selecting a contact object that stores data for business contacts from a list of data objects displayed by a database system on the user's display screen, because the user wants the contact data updated. An example of a contact object is depicted in FIG. 2 and described below in reference to FIG. 2. Examples of other data objects include a lead object, an opportunity object, and an account object.

After receiving a selection of a data object, the system outputs the data object to a user device, block 104. By way of example and without limitation, this can include the database system outputting the contact object, which may include all of the contact objects fields, to the user's display screen. An example of contact object fields are depicted in FIG. 2 and described below in reference to FIG. 2.

Having output a selected data object, the system optionally outputs an option to select from multiple third-party data services, block 106. In embodiments, this can include the database system outputting an option to the user's display screen for selecting from the Data.com® data service, the Jigsaw.com® data service, and the Dun and Bradstreet® data service.

After outputting a selected data object, the system receives a user selection of a third-party data service, block 108. For example and without limitation, this can include the user selecting Data.com®.

Having received a selection of a third-party data service, the system outputs a data service object associated with the third-party data service to a user device, block 110. By way of example and without limitation, this can include the database system outputting a data service object, which may include all of the data service objects fields, for Data.com®. An example of a data service object and its fields is depicted in FIG. 2 and described below in reference to FIG. 2.

After outputting a data object and its fields and outputting a data service object and its fields, the system receives a user selection of a data field, associated with the data object, and a data service field, associated with the data service object, block 112. In embodiments, this can include the user selecting the company field of the contact object and the employer field of the Data.com® data service object. Examples of other data object fields and other data service object fields are depicted in FIG. 2 and described below in reference to FIG. 2.

Having received selections of a data object field and a data service object field, the system stores metadata that maps between a data field, associated with a data object, and a data service field, associated with a data service object, block 114. For example and without limitation, this can include the database system storing the metadata that maps between the company field and the employer field. Examples of other mappings between data object fields and data service object fields are depicted in FIG. 2 and described below in reference to FIG. 2.

Storing the metadata that maps between a data field and a data service field may include mapping from the data field to the data service field, calculating a confidence score based on reverse mapping from the data service field to the data field, and mapping from the data service field to the data field in response to a determination that the confidence score meets a specified threshold. For example, the database system may store metadata that maps from a company revenue field of a data object to an employer revenue field of a data service object, calculate a 95% confidence score based on the reverse mapping from the employer revenue field to the company revenue field, and store metadata that maps from the employer revenue field to the company revenue field because the 95% confidence score exceeds a threshold of 80% for automatic reverse mapping. This automatic reverse mapping may save a database user a significant amount of time by eliminating the need to create reverse mapping in the reverse direction of the mapping that was just selected by the database user. The database system may notify the database user about each automatic reverse mapping on an individual or collective basis, and the database user may have the option to accept each automatic reverse mapping on an individual or collective basis, or reject each automatic reverse mapping on an individual or collective basis.

Storing the metadata that maps between a data field and a data service field may include verifying a compatibility between the data field and the data service field. For example, the database system can verify that a user's selections to map from a company revenue field of a data object to an employer revenue field of a data service object creates an incompatibility because the company revenue field is stored in a numerical format while the employer revenue field is stored in a text format. The database system may respond to identifying such an incompatibility by outputting an incompatibility message to the database user who made the corresponding selections, and/or by generating a correction for the incompatibility, such as by applying a format conversion that converts numbers in the company revenue field to text in the employer revenue field. If the database system generates a correction for an incompatibility, the database system may also generate a corresponding correction for the reverse mapping, such as by applying a format conversion that converts text in the employer revenue field to numbers in the company revenue field.

After storing metadata that maps between fields in a data object and a data service object, the system updates an instance of the data object by using the metadata to send request data to the third-party data service and using the metadata to receive response data from the third-party service, block 116. By way of example and without limitation, this can include the user requesting Data.com® to update the contact data, and the database system updating the contact data for Joe Smith of Salesforce.com by using the metadata to send data identifying Joe Smith to Datacom® and to receive data, including Joe's new phone number, from Data.com®.

Having updated an instance of a data object, the system optionally receives a user selection of another data object and/or another third-party data service, block 118. In embodiments, this can include the database system receiving a user selection of the account object.

After receiving a selection of another data object and/or another third-party data service, the system optionally outputs metadata to a user device, block 120. For example and without limitation, this can include the database system outputting the metadata that maps the company field of the contact object to the employer field of the data service object for Data.com®, which may assist the database user in mapping the company field of the account object to the employer field of the data service object for Data.com®. The database user quickly and easily creates metadata that maps between the fields of a custom object and the data fields used by a third-party data service, without the need to create code that remains hard-coded and inflexible when the database user attempts to apply the laboriously created code to a different data object—data service combination.

The method 100 may be repeated as desired. Although this disclosure describes the blocks 102-118 executing in a particular order, the blocks 102-118 may be executed in a different order. In other implementations, each of the blocks 102-118 may also be executed in combination with other blocks and/or some blocks may be divided into a different set of blocks.

FIG. 2 illustrates example objects for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects, under an embodiment. Objects 200 include a contact object 202, which includes contact object fields 204-224, and a data service object 226, which includes data service object fields 228-248.

A database user may select the name field 204 of the contact object 202, and then select both the given name field 228 and the family name field 230 of the data service object 226. These selections result in mapping a split of the name field 204 to the given name field 228 and the family name field 230. Consequently, FIG. 2 depicts the corresponding mapping metadata as the two arrows from the name field 204 to the given name field 228 and the family name field 230. When the database user requests a third-party data service to update the database system's contact data, this split mapping results in splitting a name stored by the name field 204, such as the name Joe Smith, into a first component for the given name field 228, such as the given name Joe, and a second component for the family name field 230, such as the family name Smith. This splitting enables the third-party data service to identify the name of the person for each specific contact record, which enables the third-party data service to correctly identify data for this person, which may be updated data that the corresponding contact record lacks, and provide this data, including any updated data, to the corresponding contact record. Reverse mapping from the given name field 228 and the family name field 230 to the name field 204 enables the database system to correctly identify the updated data corresponding to the given name field 228 and the family name field 230, identify that the given name field 228 and the family name field 230 correspond to the name field 204, and store the updated data in the correct instance of the lead object 202. Consequently, FIG. 2 depicts the corresponding reverse mapping metadata as the two arrows from the given name field 228 and the family name field 230 to the name field 204.

A database user may select the title field 206 of the contact object 202, and then select the job title field 232 of the data service object 226. These selections result in a mapping from the title field 206 to the job title field 232. Consequently, FIG. 2 depicts the corresponding mapping metadata as the arrow from the title field 206 to the job title field 232. This mapping enables the third-party data service to verify the identity of the person for each specific contact record, which enables the third-party data service to correctly identify data for this person, which may be updated data that the corresponding contact record lacks, and provide this data, including any updated data, to the corresponding contact record. Reverse mapping from the job title field 232 to the title field 206 enables the database system to verify the identity of the person for the updated data, and store the updated data in the correct instance of the lead object 202. Consequently, FIG. 2 depicts the corresponding reverse mapping metadata as the arrow from the job title field 232 to the title field 206.

A database user may select both the street address 1 field 210 and the street address 2 field 212 of the contact object 202, and then select the street address field 236 of the data service object 226. These selections result in mapping a merge of the street address 1 field 210 and the street address 2 field 212 to the street address field 236. Consequently, FIG. 2 depicts the corresponding mapping metadata as the two arrows from the street address 1 field 210 and the street address 2 field 212 to the street address field 236. When the database user requests a third-party data service to update the database system's contact data, this merged mapping results in merging an address stored by the street address 1 field 210, such as the address One Market Street, and an address stored by the street address 2 field 212, such as the address Suite 300, into an address stored by the street address field 236, such as the address One Market Street, Suite 300. This merging enables the third-party data service to identify the address of the person for each specific contact record, which enables the third-party data service to correctly identify data for this person, which may be updated data that the corresponding contact record lacks, and provide this data, including any updated data, to the corresponding contact record. Reverse mapping from the street address field 236 to the street address 1 field 210 and the street address 2 field 212 enables the database system to correctly identify the updated data corresponding to the street address field 236, identify that street address field 236 corresponds to the street address 1 field 210 and the street address 2 field 212, and store the updated data in the correct instance of the lead object 202. Consequently, FIG. 2 depicts the corresponding reverse mapping metadata as the two arrows from the street address field 236 to the street address 1 field 210 and the street address 2 field 212.

Although FIG. 2 depicts a data object as including data fields, the data object may be associated with any of its data fields via a corresponding foreign key. For example, the name field 204 may store a foreign key instead of storing a name itself, and the foreign key references a primary key in a name object that includes fields for a prefix, a given name, a middle name, a family name, a suffix, and an honorific title.

System Overview

FIG. 3 illustrates a block diagram of an environment 310 wherein an on-demand database service might be used. The environment 310 may include user systems 312, a network 314, a system 316, a processor system 317, an application platform 318, a network interface 320, a tenant data storage 322, a system data storage 324, program code 326, and a process space 328. In other embodiments, the environment 310 may not have all of the components listed and/or may have other elements instead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

The environment 310 is an environment in which an on-demand database service exists. A user system 312 may be any machine or system that is used by a user to access a database user system. For example, any of the user systems 312 may be a handheld computing device, a mobile phone, a laptop computer, a work station, and/or a network of computing devices. As illustrated in FIG. 3 (and in more detail in FIG. 4) the user systems 312 might interact via the network 314 with an on-demand database service, which is the system 316.

An on-demand database service, such as the system 316, is a database system that is made available to outside users that do not need to necessarily be concerned with building and/or maintaining the database system, but instead may be available for their use when the users need the database system (e.g., on the demand of the users). Some on-demand database services may store information from one or more tenants stored into tables of a common database image to form a multi-tenant database system (MTS). Accordingly, the “on-demand database service 316” and the “system 316” will be used interchangeably herein. A database image may include one or more database objects. A relational database management system (RDMS) or the equivalent may execute storage and retrieval of information against the database object(s). The application platform 318 may be a framework that allows the applications of the system 316 to run, such as the hardware and/or software, e.g., the operating system. In an embodiment, the on-demand database service 316 may include the application platform 318 which enables creation, managing and executing one or more applications developed by the provider of the on-demand database service, users accessing the on-demand database service via user systems 312, or third party application developers accessing the on-demand database service via the user systems 312.

The users of the user systems 312 may differ in their respective capacities, and the capacity of a particular user system 312 might be entirely determined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user. For example, where a salesperson is using a particular user system 312 to interact with the system 316, that user system 312 has the capacities allotted to that salesperson. However, while an administrator is using that user system 312 to interact with the system 316, that user system 312 has the capacities allotted to that administrator. In systems with a hierarchical role model, users at one permission level may have access to applications, data, and database information accessible by a lower permission level user, but may not have access to certain applications, database information, and data accessible by a user at a higher permission level. Thus, different users will have different capabilities with regard to accessing and modifying application and database information, depending on a user's security or permission level.

The network 314 is any network or combination of networks of devices that communicate with one another. For example, the network 314 may be any one or any combination of a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network), telephone network, wireless network, point-to-point network, star network, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriate configuration. As the most common type of computer network in current use is a TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) network, such as the global internetwork of networks often referred to as the “Internet” with a capital “I,” that network will be used in many of the examples herein. However, it should be understood that the networks that the one or more implementations might use are not so limited, although TCP/IP is a frequently implemented protocol.

The user systems 312 might communicate with the system 316 using TCP/IP and, at a higher network level, use other common Internet protocols to communicate, such as HTTP, FTP, AFS, WAP, etc. In an example where HTTP is used, the user systems 312 might include an HTTP client commonly referred to as a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP messages to and from an HTTP server at the system 316. Such an HTTP server might be implemented as the sole network interface between the system 316 and the network 314, but other techniques might be used as well or instead. In some implementations, the interface between the system 316 and the network 314 includes load sharing functionality, such as round-robin HTTP request distributors to balance loads and distribute incoming HTTP requests evenly over a plurality of servers. At least as for the users that are accessing that server, each of the plurality of servers has access to the MTS' data; however, other alternative configurations may be used instead.

In one embodiment, the system 316, shown in FIG. 3, implements a web-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. For example, in one embodiment, the system 316 includes application servers configured to implement and execute CRM software applications as well as provide related data, code, forms, webpages and other information to and from the user systems 312 and to store to, and retrieve from, a database system related data, objects, and Webpage content. With a multi-tenant system, data for multiple tenants may be stored in the same physical database object, however, tenant data typically is arranged so that data of one tenant is kept logically separate from that of other tenants so that one tenant does not have access to another tenant's data, unless such data is expressly shared. In certain embodiments, the system 316 implements applications other than, or in addition to, a CRM application. For example, the system 316 may provide tenant access to multiple hosted (standard and custom) applications, including a CRM application. User (or third party developer) applications, which may or may not include CRM, may be supported by the application platform 318, which manages creation, storage of the applications into one or more database objects and executing of the applications in a virtual machine in the process space of the system 316.

One arrangement for elements of the system 316 is shown in FIG. 3, including the network interface 320, the application platform 318, the tenant data storage 322 for tenant data 323, the system data storage 324 for system data 325 accessible to the system 316 and possibly multiple tenants, the program code 326 for implementing various functions of the system 316, and the process space 328 for executing MTS system processes and tenant-specific processes, such as running applications as part of an application hosting service. Additional processes that may execute on the system 316 include database indexing processes.

Several elements in the system shown in FIG. 3 include conventional, well-known elements that are explained only briefly here. For example, each of the user systems 312 could include a desktop personal computer, workstation, laptop, PDA, cell phone, or any wireless access protocol (WAP) enabled device or any other computing device capable of interfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet or other network connection. Each of the user systems 312 typically runs an HTTP client, e.g., a browsing program, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, Netscape's Navigator browser, Opera's browser, or a WAP-enabled browser in the case of a cell phone, PDA or other wireless device, or the like, allowing a user (e.g., subscriber of the multi-tenant database system) of the user systems 312 to access, process and view information, pages and applications available to it from the system 316 over the network 314. Each of the user systems 312 also typically includes one or more user interface devices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, trackball, touch pad, touch screen, pen or the like, for interacting with a graphical user interface (GUI) provided by the browser on a display (e.g., a monitor screen, LCD display, etc.) in conjunction with pages, forms, applications and other information provided by the system 316 or other systems or servers. For example, the user interface device may be used to access data and applications hosted by the system 316, and to perform searches on stored data, and otherwise allow a user to interact with various GUI pages that may be presented to a user. As discussed above, embodiments are suitable for use with the Internet, which refers to a specific global internetwork of networks. However, it should be understood that other networks can be used instead of the Internet, such as an intranet, an extranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network, any LAN or WAN or the like.

According to one embodiment, each of the user systems 312 and all of its components are operator configurable using applications, such as a browser, including computer code run using a central processing unit such as an Intel Pentium® processor or the like. Similarly, the system 316 (and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) and all of their components might be operator configurable using application(s) including computer code to run using a central processing unit such as the processor system 317, which may include an Intel Pentium® processor or the like, and/or multiple processor units. A computer program product embodiment includes a machine-readable storage medium (media) having instructions stored thereon/in which can be used to program a computer to perform any of the processes of the embodiments described herein. Computer code for operating and configuring the system 316 to intercommunicate and to process webpages, applications and other data and media content as described herein are preferably downloaded and stored on a hard disk, but the entire program code, or portions thereof, may also be stored in any other volatile or non-volatile memory medium or device as is well known, such as a ROM or RAM, or provided on any media capable of storing program code, such as any type of rotating media including floppy disks, optical discs, digital versatile disk (DVD), compact disk (CD), microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, and magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any type of media or device suitable for storing instructions and/or data. Additionally, the entire program code, or portions thereof, may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source over a transmission medium, e.g., over the Internet, or from another server, as is well known, or transmitted over any other conventional network connection as is well known (e.g., extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using any communication medium and protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet, etc.) as are well known. It will also be appreciated that computer code for implementing embodiments can be implemented in any programming language that can be executed on a client system and/or server or server system such as, for example, C, C++, HTML, any other markup language, Java™, JavaScript, ActiveX, any other scripting language, such as VBScript, and many other programming languages as are well known may be used. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.).

According to one embodiment, the system 316 is configured to provide webpages, forms, applications, data and media content to the user (client) systems 312 to support the access by the user systems 312 as tenants of the system 316. As such, the system 316 provides security mechanisms to keep each tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than one MTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another (e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or they may be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one or more servers located in city A and one or more servers located in city B). As used herein, each MTS could include one or more logically and/or physically connected servers distributed locally or across one or more geographic locations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to include a computer system, including processing hardware and process space(s), and an associated storage system and database application (e.g., OODBMS or RDBMS) as is well known in the art. It should also be understood that “server system” and “server” are often used interchangeably herein. Similarly, the database object described herein can be implemented as single databases, a distributed database, a collection of distributed databases, a database with redundant online or offline backups or other redundancies, etc., and might include a distributed database or storage network and associated processing intelligence.

FIG. 4 also illustrates the environment 310. However, in FIG. 4 elements of the system 316 and various interconnections in an embodiment are further illustrated. FIG. 4 shows that the each of the user systems 312 may include a processor system 312A, a memory system 312B, an input system 312C, and an output system 312D. FIG. 4 shows the network 314 and the system 316. FIG. 4 also shows that the system 316 may include the tenant data storage 322, the tenant data 323, the system data storage 324, the system data 325, a User Interface (UI) 430, an Application Program Interface (API) 432, a PL/SOQL 434, save routines 436, an application setup mechanism 438, applications servers 4001-400N, a system process space 402, tenant process spaces 404, a tenant management process space 410, a tenant storage area 412, a user storage 414, and application metadata 416. In other embodiments, the environment 310 may not have the same elements as those listed above and/or may have other elements instead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

The user systems 312, the network 314, the system 316, the tenant data storage 322, and the system data storage 324 were discussed above in FIG. 3. Regarding the user systems 312, the processor system 312A may be any combination of one or more processors. The memory system 312B may be any combination of one or more memory devices, short term, and/or long term memory. The input system 312C may be any combination of input devices, such as one or more keyboards, mice, trackballs, scanners, cameras, and/or interfaces to networks. The output system 312D may be any combination of output devices, such as one or more monitors, printers, and/or interfaces to networks. As shown by FIG. 4, the system 316 may include the network interface 320 (of FIG. 3) implemented as a set of HTTP application servers 400, the application platform 318, the tenant data storage 322, and the system data storage 324. Also shown is the system process space 402, including individual tenant process spaces 404 and the tenant management process space 410. Each application server 400 may be configured to access tenant data storage 322 and the tenant data 323 therein, and the system data storage 324 and the system data 325 therein to serve requests of the user systems 312. The tenant data 323 might be divided into individual tenant storage areas 412, which can be either a physical arrangement and/or a logical arrangement of data. Within each tenant storage area 412, the user storage 414 and the application metadata 416 might be similarly allocated for each user. For example, a copy of a user's most recently used (MRU) items might be stored to the user storage 414. Similarly, a copy of MRU items for an entire organization that is a tenant might be stored to the tenant storage area 412. The UI 430 provides a user interface and the API 432 provides an application programmer interface to the system 316 resident processes to users and/or developers at the user systems 312. The tenant data and the system data may be stored in various databases, such as one or more Oracle™ databases.

The application platform 318 includes the application setup mechanism 438 that supports application developers' creation and management of applications, which may be saved as metadata into the tenant data storage 322 by the save routines 436 for execution by subscribers as one or more tenant process spaces 404 managed by the tenant management process 410 for example. Invocations to such applications may be coded using the PL/SOQL 434 that provides a programming language style interface extension to the API 432. A detailed description of some PL/SOQL language embodiments is discussed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478 entitled, METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA A MULTI-TENANT ON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, filed Sep. 21, 2007, which is incorporated in its entirety herein for all purposes. Invocations to applications may be detected by one or more system processes, which manages retrieving the application metadata 416 for the subscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata as an application in a virtual machine.

Each application server 400 may be communicably coupled to database systems, e.g., having access to the system data 325 and the tenant data 323, via a different network connection. For example, one application server 4001 might be coupled via the network 314 (e.g., the Internet), another application server 400N-1 might be coupled via a direct network link, and another application server 400N might be coupled by yet a different network connection. Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are typical protocols for communicating between application servers 400 and the database system. However, it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that other transport protocols may be used to optimize the system depending on the network interconnect used.

In certain embodiments, each application server 400 is configured to handle requests for any user associated with any organization that is a tenant. Because it is desirable to be able to add and remove application servers from the server pool at any time for any reason, there is preferably no server affinity for a user and/or organization to a specific application server 400. In one embodiment, therefore, an interface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5 Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the application servers 400 and the user systems 312 to distribute requests to the application servers 400. In one embodiment, the load balancer uses a least connections algorithm to route user requests to the application servers 400. Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as round robin and observed response time, also can be used. For example, in certain embodiments, three consecutive requests from the same user could hit three different application servers 400, and three requests from different users could hit the same application server 400. In this manner, the system 316 is multi-tenant, wherein the system 316 handles storage of, and access to, different objects, data and applications across disparate users and organizations.

As an example of storage, one tenant might be a company that employs a sales force where each salesperson uses the system 316 to manage their sales process. Thus, a user might maintain contact data, leads data, customer follow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data, etc., all applicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., in the tenant data storage 322). In an example of a MTS arrangement, since all of the data and the applications to access, view, modify, report, transmit, calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a user system having nothing more than network access, the user can manage his or her sales efforts and cycles from any of many different user systems. For example, if a salesperson is visiting a customer and the customer has Internet access in their lobby, the salesperson can obtain critical updates as to that customer while waiting for the customer to arrive in the lobby.

While each user's data might be separate from other users' data regardless of the employers of each user, some data might be organization-wide data shared or accessible by a plurality of users or all of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, there might be some data structures managed by the system 316 that are allocated at the tenant level while other data structures might be managed at the user level. Because an MTS might support multiple tenants including possible competitors, the MTS should have security protocols that keep data, applications, and application use separate. Also, because many tenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their own system, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions that may be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data and tenant specific data, the system 316 might also maintain system level data usable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data might include industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharable among tenants.

In certain embodiments, the user systems 312 (which may be client systems) communicate with the application servers 400 to request and update system-level and tenant-level data from the system 316 that may require sending one or more queries to the tenant data storage 322 and/or the system data storage 324. The system 316 (e.g., an application server 400 in the system 316) automatically generates one or more SQL statements (e.g., one or more SQL queries) that are designed to access the desired information. The system data storage 324 may generate query plans to access the requested data from the database.

Each database can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, such as a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefined categories. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may be used herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and custom objects. It should be understood that “table” and “object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each table generally contains one or more data categories logically arranged as columns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or record of a table contains an instance of data for each category defined by the fields. For example, a CRM database may include a table that describes a customer with fields for basic contact information such as name, address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table might describe a purchase order, including fields for information such as customer, product, sale price, date, etc. In some multi-tenant database systems, standard entity tables might be provided for use by all tenants. For CRM database applications, such standard entities might include tables for Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity data, each containing pre-defined fields. It should be understood that the word “entity” may also be used interchangeably herein with “object” and “table”.

In some multi-tenant database systems, tenants may be allowed to create and store custom objects, or they may be allowed to customize standard entities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standard objects, including custom index fields. U.S. Pat. No. 7,779,039, filed Apr. 2, 2004, entitled “Custom Entities and Fields in a Multi-Tenant Database System”, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference, teaches systems and methods for creating custom objects as well as customizing standard objects in a multi-tenant database system. In certain embodiments, for example, all custom entity data rows are stored in a single multi-tenant physical table, which may contain multiple logical tables per organization. It is transparent to customers that their multiple “tables” are in fact stored in one large table or that their data may be stored in the same table as the data of other customers.

While one or more implementations have been described by way of example and in terms of the specific embodiments, it is to be understood that one or more implementations are not limited to the disclosed embodiments. To the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements as would be apparent to those skilled in the art. Therefore, the scope of the appended claims should be accorded the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar arrangements. 

The invention claimed is:
 1. A system for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects, the system comprising: one or more processors; and a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a plurality of instructions, which when executed, cause the one or more processors to: output, by a database system to a user device, a list of data field names associated with a data object in response to receiving an explicit selection to display the list of data field names associated with the data object by a user; output, by the database system to the user device, a list of data service field names associated with explicit user selections of a third-party data service and a data service object, in response to receiving explicit selections of the third-party data service and the data service object by the user; store, by the database system, metadata that maps between one or more data fields, which correspond to one or more data field names explicitly selected by the user from the outputted list of data field names, and one or more data service fields, which correspond to one or more data service field names that is explicitly selected by the user from the outputted list of data service field names, wherein storing the metadata comprises verifying the compatibility between the one or more data field names and the one or more data service field names; and cause, by the database system, an instance of the data object to be updated by using the metadata, and a plurality of field names that are in both the outputted list of data field names and the outputted list of data service field names, to send the instance of the data object to the third-party data service, to receive the instance of the data service object from the third-party data service, and to update the instance of the data object with corresponding data in the instance of the data service object.
 2. The system of claim 1, comprising further instructions, which when executed, cause the one or more processors to output, by the database system to the user device, an option to select from a plurality of third-party data services comprising the third-party data service.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the data object comprises the data field, and the data field is associated with the data object via a foreign key.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein storing the metadata that maps between the data field and the data service field comprises mapping from the data field to the data service field, calculating a confidence score based on reverse mapping from the data service field to the data field, and mapping from the data service field to the data field in response to a determination that the confidence score meets a specified threshold.
 5. The system of claim 1, comprising further instructions, which when executed, cause the one or more processors to output, by the database system to the user device, the metadata in response to receiving a user selection of at least one of another data object and another third-party data service.
 6. A computer program product comprising computer-readable program code to be executed by one or more processors when retrieved from a non-transitory computer-readable medium, the computer-readable program code including instructions to: output, by a database system to a user device, a list of data field names associated with a data object in response to receiving an explicit selection to display the list of data field names associated with the data object by a user; output, by the database system to the user device, a list of data service field names associated with explicit user selections of a third-party data service and a data service object, in response to receiving explicit selections of the third-party data service and the data service object by the user; store, by the database system, metadata that maps between one or more data fields, which correspond to one or more data field names explicitly selected by the user from the outputted list of data field names, and one or more data service fields, which correspond to one or more data service field names explicitly selected by the user from the outputted list of data service field names, wherein storing the metadata comprises verifying the compatibility between the one or more data field names and the one or more data service field names; and cause, by the database system, an instance of the data object to be updated by using the metadata, and a plurality of field names that are in both the outputted list of data field names and the outputted list of data service field names, to send the instance of the data object to the third-party data service, to receive the instance of the data service object from the third-party data service, and to update the instance of the data object with corresponding data in the instance of the data service object.
 7. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the computer-readable program code comprises further instructions to output, by the database system to the user device, an option to select from a plurality of third-party data services comprising the third-party data service.
 8. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein at least one of the data object comprises the data field, and the data field is associated with the data object via a foreign key.
 9. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein storing the metadata that maps between the data field and the data service field comprises mapping from the data field to the data service field, calculating a confidence score based on reverse mapping from the data service field to the data field, and mapping from the data service field to the data field in response to a determination that the confidence score meets a specified threshold.
 10. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the computer-readable program code comprises further instructions to output, by the database system to the user device, the metadata in response to receiving a user selection of at least one of another data object and another third-party data service.
 11. A method for enabling a third-party data service to update custom data objects, the method comprising: outputting, by a database system to a user device, a list of data field names associated with a data object in response to receiving an explicit selection to display the list of data field names associated with the data object by a user; outputting, by the database system to the user device, a list of data service field names associated with explicit user selections of a third-party data service and a data service object, in response to receiving explicit selections of the third-party data service and the data service object by the user; storing, by the database system, metadata that maps between one or more data fields, which correspond to one or more data field names explicitly selected by the user from the outputted list of data field names, and one or more data service fields, which correspond to one or more data service field names explicitly selected by the user from the outputted list of data service field names, wherein storing the metadata comprises verifying the compatibility between the one or more data field names and the one or more data service field names; and causing, by the database system, an instance of the data object to be updated by using the metadata, and a plurality of field names that are in both the outputted list of data field names and the outputted list of data service field names, to send the instance of the data object to the third-party data service, to receive the instance of the data service object from the third-party data service, and to update the instance of the data object with corresponding data in the instance of the data service object.
 12. The method of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises outputting, by the database system to the user device, an option to select from a plurality of third-party data services comprising the third-party data service.
 13. The method of claim 11, wherein at least one of the data object comprises the data field, and the data field is associated with the data object via a foreign key.
 14. The method of claim 11, wherein storing the metadata that maps between the data field and the data service field comprises verifying a compatibility between the data field and the data service field, mapping from the data field to the data service field, calculating a confidence score based on reverse mapping from the data service field to the data field, and mapping from the data service field to the data field in response to a determination that the confidence score meets a specified threshold.
 15. The method of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises outputting, by the database system to the user device, the metadata in response to receiving a user selection of at least one of another data object and another third-party data service. 